XX.

It has occurred to me that one might define Art as:  an expression, satisfying and abiding, of the zest of life.  This is applicable to every form of Art devised by man, for, in his creative moment, whether he produce a great drama or carve a piece of foliage in wood, the artist is moved and inspired by supreme enjoyment of some aspect of the world about him; an enjoyment in itself keener than that experienced by another man, and intensified, prolonged, by the power—­which comes to him we know not how—­of recording in visible or audible form that emotion of rare vitality.  Art, in some degree, is within the scope of every human being, were he but the ploughman who utters a few would-be melodious notes, the mere outcome of health and strength, in the field at sunrise; he sings, or tries to, prompted by an unusual gusto in being, and the rude stave is all his own.  Another was he, who also at the plough, sang of the daisy, of the field-mouse, or shaped the rhythmic tale of Tam o’ Shanter.  Not only had life a zest for him incalculably stronger and subtler than that which stirs the soul of Hodge, but he uttered it in word and music such as go to the heart of mankind, and hold a magic power for ages.

For some years there has been a great deal of talk about Art in our country.  It began, I suspect, when the veritable artistic impulse of the Victorian time had flagged, when the energy of a great time was all but exhausted.  Principles always become a matter of vehement discussion when practice is at ebb.  Not by taking thought does one become an artist, or grow even an inch in that direction—­which is not at all the same as saying that he who is an artist cannot profit by conscious effort.  Goethe (the example so often urged by imitators unlike him in every feature of humanity) took thought enough about his Faust; but what of those youthtime lyrics, not the least precious of his achievements, which were scribbled as fast as pen could go, thwartwise on the paper, because he could not stop to set it straight?  Dare I pen, even for my own eyes, the venerable truth that an artist is born and not made?  It seems not superfluous, in times which have heard disdainful criticism of Scott, on the ground that he had no artistic conscience, that he scribbled without a thought of style, that he never elaborated his scheme before beginning—­as Flaubert, of course you know, invariably did.  Why, after all, has one not heard that a certain William Shakespeare turned out his so-called works of art with something like criminal carelessness?  Is it not a fact that a bungler named Cervantes was so little in earnest about his Art that, having in one chapter described the stealing of Sancho’s donkey, he presently, in mere forgetfulness, shows us Sancho riding on Dapple, as if nothing had happened?  Does not one Thackeray shamelessly avow on the last page of a grossly “subjective” novel that he had killed Lord Farintosh’s mother at one page and brought her to life again at another?  These sinners against Art are none the less among the world’s supreme artists, for they lived, in a sense, in a degree, unintelligible to these critics of theirs, and their work is an expression, satisfying and abiding, of the zest of life.